Saturday, March 16, 2013

The Purpose of "The Scientific Dissent from Darwin" List

A few years ago the IDiots tried to collect a list of credible scientists who supported creationism. They created a statement called "The Scientific Dissent from Darwin." It goes like this ...

We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.

Only an IDiot would claim that supporters of this statement are also creationists. Many atheist scientists, including me, would agree with the statement. Nevertheless, if you look at the list of people who signed [Scientific Dissent from Darwin List] you'll not find very many evolutionary biologists because we all know that the IDiots will misuse this list.

A few days ago someone named Joshua Youngkin posted to Evolution News & Views (sic) in response to a question about the list. According to Youngkin, the list "is a thorn in the side of those who say there's no scientific debate over whether evolution works in a completely naturalistic fashion."

Why is that? The statement doesn't say anything about god or naturalism. This is exactly the kind of doubletalk you expect from IDiots.

Later on in the post Joshua Youngkin says,

The Dissent from Darwin statement counters and preempts any claim that (1) there is no scientific dissent over how evolution happens, by what means, that is, or that (2) it is unscientific to be skeptical of the proposition that natural selection and random mutation together satisfactorily explain the development of life over time.

There are plenty of ways to "preempt" such a false claim. Reading the scientific literature is one.

The list does serve one important purpose and for that we are truly thankful. It's the best list of Ph.D IDiots that I know of. It's easy to find your local IDiots using a simple word search. For example, I found these names from the University of Toronto: Stephen J. Cheesman Ph.D. Geophysics and Alfred G. Ratz Ph.D. Engineering Physics. Unfortunately, as I pointed out some years ago [I'm not a Darwinist, but I Ain't Signing], neither of these gentlemen are listed in the university phone book and they are not on the University website so we don't know what they are up to these days.

Project Steve with 1249 signatures, is an excellent parody of the creationist list.

24 comments
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There's only one Pole on the list, Prof. Maciej Giertych, a well-known conservative politician who made a spectacle of himself a few years ago, by organising a young-earth creationist seminar in Brussels (he was a member of the European Parliament at the time). He received his MA (in forestry/dendrology) at Oxford, his PhD at the University of Toronto, and his post-doctoral degree (habilitation) in my city in Poland. We could both claim him as an ex-local IDiot.

Why sign a statement that was designed by creationists with the purpose of misleading scientists into thinking that it had some academic target, but was actually designed to fool the public about evolution and it's perception among scientists?

So you're saying, "sure scientists disagree with each other on evolution and sure not all scientists believe in evolution but if we tell the public that, they might start considering the unthinkable - Intelligent design! :-O"?Sorry but that isn't honest or scientific. It's childish.

For that matter, there are at least two ways of construing the phrase "creationist list". You've obviously interpreted it to mean "list of creationists", whereas it can also mean a list created and bruited about by a creationist organization (in this case, the Discovery Institute). This latter sense does not require that every signatory be a creationist.

By the way, only some 2% of the signatories are biologists by training. Most of the rest are unlikely to have an informed opinion on anything biological, so how can their dissent be "scientific"? If hundreds of biologists, pharmacologists, economists, computer scientists, agronomists and historians of science signed a letter of "scientific dissent from quantum chromodynamics", everyone would say, "So what? Who cares? They don't even understand what they are dissenting from." But apparently in matters of biological evolution every lay person's opinion matters.

To point out the blindingly obvious, "supporters of this statement" and "signatories to the list" are not groups with a 1:1 overlap.

To point out the blindingly obvious, you're engaged in a desperate dodge. But hey, if you need to deploy some creative exegesis to save your prophet, be my guest.

whereas it can also mean a list created and bruited about by a creationist organization (in this case, the Discovery Institute).

The DI is not a creationist organization, unless we're bastardizing language for political gain. Oh wait! We are!

And what's the other list mocking, Null? There's no statement in there about creationism by Moran's own admission. All that's there is a statement Moran claims to agree with, one he claims is all too obvious - but that he will not support, because to do so would embolden The Enemy.

So, what's a scientist to do? Shut his mouth when someone says something that is true, and side with the people mocking what he knows to be true, because the wrong people with the wrong political affiliations happened to say it? He'd fit in well with Lysenko. No, actually - Lysenko was in charge for a while. He'd be a crony to Lysenko.

Moran: you agree with the statement? Then sign your name to the list, coward.

To point out the blindingly obvious, you're engaged in a desperate dodge. But hey, if you need to deploy some creative exegesis to save your prophet, be my guest.

If "supporters of this statement" and "signatories to this list" are supposed to be the same thing, then obviously Larry Moran cannot be a "supporter of the statement" and you have no basis for demanding that he attach his name to the DI's propaganda. If his name isn't there, he cannot be one of the statement's supporters.

The DI is not a creationist organization, unless we're bastardizing language for political gain.

The only people bastardizing language are the cdesign proponentsists, chiefly by concocting the term "intelligent design" to cover their transparent attempts to skate just under any Establishment Clause challenge. It is nothing but mere camouflage for attempts to force non-science into the public school classroom.

Please, it's 2013. It's 15 years after the Wedge Document was drafted. Let's stop pretending as if ID is some new quantity, put forth by daring seekers after truth. It's a hackneyed attempt by religious reactionaries to breathe some new life into the moldering corpse of the argument from design.

The other list is mocking the idea that scientific issues can be properly addressed by drafting lists. As Albert Einstein aptly commented, regarding the comical polemic Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein) which also relied on the Power of the List, "If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!"

This list serves one purpose: to convince the majority of the general public, who know little about evolution or science in general, that there is a crisis amongst scientists as to the robustness of the theory of evolution.

--After all (paraphrasing Pat Robertson), if even hundreds of preeminent scientists have their doubts about the theory then why should I accept it.--

The only scientists (and many of the signatories are in fact not scientists) who would sign that list are those whose world-views are shaped by religion first, and science second. Strange that religosity would be a pre-requisite for "scientific" dissent from a scientific theory.

So, what's a scientist to do? Shut his mouth when someone says something that is true, and side with the people mocking what he knows to be true, because the wrong people with the wrong political affiliations happened to say it?

Your problem Crude, is that you think everyone is stupid. Scientists will not play your game. This must come as a blow given that the "list" strategy was so very, very clever.

But alas, you will need to find another way to misinform the scientifically illiterate. But keep trying Crude..you are smart..and don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.

Honest people who understand the debate might agree with the intentionally ambiguous statement because they know there are important mechanisms of evolution other than just mutation and natural selection; for instance, genetic drift and founder effects.

Honest knowledgeable people might refuse to sign the intentionally ambiguous statement because they understand very well that the statement will be used for dishonest purposes. Refusal to sign in such a case is no more cowardice than refusing to sign statements concocted by the Institute for Historical Research.

Dishonest and/or stupid people will interpret the statement as Youngkin has -- as saying that evolution requires supernatural intervention.

Refusal to sign in such a case is no more cowardice than refusing to sign statements concocted by the Institute for Historical [Review].

I can just see it:

"We are skeptical of claims that the German military bears sole responsibility for the Holocaust. Careful examination of the evidence for the Holocaust should be encouraged."

This is undoubtedly true, if only because the Nazis often relied on allied organizations like Croatia's Ustaše to carry out their mass murders, and to a certain extent these organizations were given leeway for independent action (to use the example of the Ustaše again, there's no evidence the Nazi command had anything against Serbs, but the Croats did and so massacred them along with the Roma and the Jews).

Yet as unexceptionable as each individual sentence is, I doubt many mainstream historians would be inclined to sign on.

The statement itself is pretty unobjectionable: the claim that "RM+NS [alone] can account for the complexity of life" is unsupportable in its face because other mechanisms and influences, such as horizontal transfer and epigenetics, are already known or suspected of being involved.

Likewise, the call for "careful examination of Darwinian theory" is laudable, if only for its historic content, but also because the gobshites fail to take account of everything that has happened in science over the last 150 years.

I've proposed this before: a bunch of the most fundie-repellent Evilushunist perfessers (that's you, Larry, and the other guy with a beard, and maybe that nice Dr. Dawkins) should ask to publicly sign the statement in the DI's offices and be presented with a scroll of it by DrDrDr D himself.

And then you should give your acceptance speech on why you're signing it. Can I draft it for you?

There is in fact a good bit of dishonesty concealed in the statement:1. The Seattle Bible Organization promotes a strawman rendition of Darwinism (for their purposes here random mutation + n.s.) that misrepresents two of the theory’s conventional cornerstones as its total content.2. Disco-Tute’s simplistic portrayal of evolution rigs a bogus view of an evolutionary biology that excludes genetic drift, recombination, gene interactions, multiple adaptive solutions, phenotypic plasticity and many other center-stage mechanisms that take “Darwinism” much beyond mutation and selection. 3. DI’s “Scientific Dissent” oath could equally well have been written or endorsed by Hitler’s political machine (European man the Creator’s masterpiece – not a souped-up ape) or from the viewpoint Stalin-Lysenko Creative Evolution (Cosmic guidance to Socialist perfection – Lysenko had selectionists shot). I think the Pan-Voodoo “Big Tent of Dissent,” if they were to stop to think about it, is a little larger than our evangelical friends might like.

Chessman is listed here http://www.rae.org/pdf/darwinskeptics.pdfAs a "genetic systems analyst" who got his geophysics degree of UT. Presumably this is his PhD thesis:http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/11067177?versionId=12953275 A few papers show a few different addresses, one is Pacific Geoscience Centre, Sidney, BC, V8L 4B2, Canada.A few other papers seem to indicate Chessman worked for the Canadian Geological Survey. A 1993 paper lists the Pacific Centre as his address, but then says his current address is: Department of Physics, University of Toronto.

And now I found at year 2000 paper with him as co-author, listing his address as "Custom Geophysical Software, Toronto, Ont., Canada"

As far as AG Ratz, all I find with a web of science search are some engineering papers from the 70s.

Laurence A. Moran

Larry Moran is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. You can contact him by looking up his email address on the University of Toronto website.

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Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake.
Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.
Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.
Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.